One person was killed and 12 people were rescued after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said.

The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 500 feet (152 meters) beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

The 12 adults who were trapped about 1,000 feet (305 meters) below ground had access to water and used radios to communicate with authorities, who told them there was an elevator issue, Mikesell said.

  • RedditWanderer@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Elevators don’t just drop out of the sky when the cables snap like in the matrix.

    They skip from having a malfunction at 500ft to being stuck at 1000…My guess is the person either died of a heart attack/malaise, electrocution or of some sort of smoke/chemical inhalation.

    • lad
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      1 month ago

      I read it as ‘the elevator was going for them to return them to the surface, but failed, so they stayed in the mine’. The article is a bit scarce, not sure what really happened.

      Edit: another user found more details: https://lemmy.world/comment/12841678